


linger

by orphan_account



Series: professional environment [3]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Freeform, M/M, Original Team, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:48:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2395631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jane watches, hands still raised on the attack, as the red demoman examines his wound. he rips a piece of cloth from his uniform, right at the cuff, and jane can tell that he's gritting his teeth because his jaw sets tight and rigid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	linger

**Author's Note:**

> jane is the blu soldier, tavish the red demoman. i almost tagged this as canon divergent because, as a standalone not paired with p.e., it is pretty much canon divergent shipping fodder for demosolly!
> 
> this one was rough to write. i've always been more partial to thinking about the demoman than the soldier. there's not any reason behind this other than that i found him easier to relate to than jane!
> 
> backstory for jane and tavish, jane centric. this is the beginning of his career at BLU, long before many of the current mercenaries on the BLU team arrive. that isn't very clear and im sorry.

he prefers not to think about home. not because home means something particularly life-changing or moving, but because he hates being reminded of what he's missing out on the base, which is not much:

a rotten old wizard, probably smoking his tobacco pipe on the wide front stoop, the semi-domesticated raccoons piling up on the rocking chair opposite his own. a dripping faucet. several records of old world war one songs and anthems. a Polaroid of him and his grandfather, god rest his soul.

\---

he prefers not to think about anything.

each of the members of Builders League United wears a distinctly different shade of blue. his own is a soft, playful blue, almost baby. it brings out the sun in his skin, makes the sunburned tip of his nose seem more prominent and the tanned knuckles he grips around his shovel more pronounced.

not that he noticed.

\---

one day, in the heat of battle, he turns a corner. at the same time, a flash of red rounds the corner toward him. they both jolt into action. jane's shovel comes crashing toward the stranger, the red scum, and their axe stops within centimeters of jane's hip.

they stand for a moment, each breathing hard as they hold each other's weapons. the red, a dark-skinned individual with an eyepatch and a reek of booze, has begun to bleed, shovel buried just deep enough to cause him to wince every time jane's arm falters for a moment.

after a long, agonizing few minutes, the red drops his hands. the axe falls against his side and the sliced palm flexes, eliciting a strained hiss from the mouth of what jane deduces as their demoman. he has the uniform, though a little different from blu's, and he matches the description from those exploded painfully by the apparently devastating sticky bombs.

silence falls over them. jane watches, hands still raised on the attack, as the red demoman examines his wound. he rips a piece of cloth from his uniform, right at the cuff, and jane can tell that he's gritting his teeth because his jaw sets tight and rigid. he pulls from his side a brown bottle of sloshing liquid. jane wonders if the smell is from the bottle or from the man himself. he sits, leans himself against a wooden wall, and pours the liquid onto his wound.

"you'll cause tissue damage," jane says, almost on instinct. this demoman is surely desperate, he thinks. where is his medic?

the demoman doesn't reply. instead, he cleans the wound as best he can, drips it dry, and wraps the shredded cloth of his uniform around it as best he can with one hand. jane watches intently, confused and terrified. who is this man?

the demoman leans back against the wall, hand now bandaged, and sighs. then, as though waking after a long nap, he rises on unsteady legs and positions his weapons in his hands. jane, not realizing he'd let himself relax, jumps to alert.

the man looks at him for a moment, squints, and then smiles. it is an unnaturally charming gesture. he turns, flexes his hand once, and then begins his exit. jane watches him go.

the blu team wins the battle and jane can't help but wonder if the demoman in red contributed to the loss.

\---

the next time he sees the demoman in red, the ceasefire has been called for the night.

jane pulls his cigar from his pocket and lights it with a match. he climbs the staircase leading out of the base with his team, and only when they are deposited into the wide, cool mesa does he break from the pack. as he goes, the heavy pats him once on the back and the pyro waves him off.

he walks for a long time, smoking two, then three cigars on the way. eventually, he finds teufort, the town now too far from the base they are positioned in. the people welcome him, albeit awkwardly. nobody really knows what the men down at the old military base do, but they do not expect it to be very peaceful. jane finds himself in an old pub.

the pub is shabby, and one would hardly call it homely, but jane settles himself in anyway because the atmosphere is lively and it is warmer inside now than it is out. he orders a beer in a brown-tinted bottle, and only after he takes a long sip from it does he realize that someone has taken the seat beside him.

the demoman is there, smelling of sweat and something distinct that jane will not allow himself to comment on positively. he is not looking at jane, he can't possibly be, not with his eyepatch facing the soldier like a bulging eye that bores into jane's own. jane studies his face.

he is not skinny, not by any means, but he is not a mass of weight as the heavy weapons professionals are required to be. he is slouched over and jane can see that he has changed his clothes. a yellow shirt, thin and faded, clings to his forearms but bunches at his waist where, ultimately, jane decides he is starting to show his age and his drink a little. he also decides that it doesn't look bad on the demoman. his nose slopes down but turns up just barely at the end, very gently.

his profile is stunning. so stunning that jane does not realize that it has shifted until the demoman's right knee knocks into his left and the two of them are facing each other.

"you again!" he says, voice soft but pronounced, and jane is struck by speechlessness. what had he said? his accent was so obtrusive, so unattractive in both sound and execution.

"oh! you. hello." jane replies, stiffly extending a hand. "it is against my personal code to associate with the enemy, but since we are at a ceasefire, i will allow this contact to continue!" he can feel his own foot stuffing down his throat.

the man nods and class jane's hand in his own. it is remarkably warm.

\---

if jane closes his eyes while listening to tavish speak, he does not seem like a member of the other team. he does not seem like someone that had been mercilessly sending him to the respawn just days earlier with wild drunken battle cries. he just seems like someone trustworthy.

this, of course, is very difficult, mostly because every muscle that makes up jane's instinct (and there are a lot, he brags to himself) is screaming at him that the wobbling scot in front of him is the enemy and should be swiftly executed.

he does not execute tavish. instead, he sits with him, in an excluded corner of the battlefield they're occupying for the time being.

"jane," tavish says. he sounds surprisingly serious. "what do you see when you look up at night?"

jane furrows his eyebrows. "stars. clouds. the moon. why? is this a test?"

tavish smiles, looks over at him, and then up. the sky is bluer than the shirt on jane's back, but the slightest hint of orange is beginning to creep into one side while a deep inky blue edges up the other. "no, it wasn't a test."

"what do you see?" jane hesitates, then looks up after tavish.

"the same thing you do, o'course. stars, moons, the clouds if the weather's bad. but i also see other things." he pauses for a beat, then two, before continuing. "i see great bellied beasts flicking their tails. a long thin stream of wine that would keep you there forever if you drank even a drop. i see gladiators dressed in red and in blue. i see you and i."

"oh," jane says. he has never seen any of those things in the night sky. he's almost jealous, and just as he begins to formulate a way to ask tavish how he came to being able to see, the ceasefire alarm rings and the winners are announced. this time it is the red team. jane and tavish usually shake hands and depart, but today tavish gives jane a hug. jane hastily returns it, not the king of contact and friendly gestures.

tavish leaves tearfully. jane leaves thoroughly confused.

he chalks it up as "a european thing he doesn't understand" and also as "a drunk thing he doesn't understand".

\---

jane dreams unusually.

rather than replays of his day prior, of guts spilling over the blade of his shovel or of dragging himself to the closest medic, vision blurry, he sees things.

he sees the universe. he sees a planet with its rings and its brightness and if he stares too long, he finds his hands reached toward it.

he looks down and finds himself in a field. beside him, a brook whispers and laughs beside him. he tastes it to be sure--it isn't wine. he steps over brightly colored flowers.

jane does not see tavish. he is alone.

he calls out, into a thick wood that cascades around his left side. nobody answers. he decides to sit on the grass, and then decides to lie down on it. he sits there, in his dream, for a long time. the stars move around him but the big ringed planet, all fine maroons fading to reds fading to a deep muddy brown, never moves.

jane sees a figure in his peripherals, but when he tries to turn and look, he finds himself unable. he is frozen in the planet's gaze.

the figure shuffles toward him, takes a place beside him on the grass. their shoulders touch, just barely.

the figure takes his hand. it is remarkably warm.

\---

jane wakes to the sound of a trumpet, though he is the only one that plays the trumpet.

he decides that he will play the trumpet.


End file.
